Archive for the ‘Le Mans Legend’ tag

Sir Stirling Moss will take to the track at Le Mans next month behind the wheel of his freshly repaired and race prepared 1961 Porsche RS 61, during the Le Mans Legend historic race.

Moss bought the car back in March 2010 and entered it at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca last August with disappointing results. The car’s gearbox seized on the warm-up lap and Moss spun off the course before being hit by a Lotus that ran off the track in the same turn. The legendary Moss was uninjured in the crash but his car suffered substantial front end damage.

Subsquently, the Porsche was shipped to United Kingdom-based Porsche specialist Maxted-Page & Prill for repair, and will be race ready for the Le Mans Legend on June 11, which customarily runs a few hours before the start of the modern 24 Hours. Moss’ Porsche race car is similar to the RS 60 he raced during the 1960s, and nearly drove to victory at the 1961 Targa Florio. This Porsche Spyder is one of 14 four-cam RS 61 racers that Porsche developed for the 1961 season – an evolution of Porsche’s Spyder series of road racers that included the 550, RSK and RS 60.

Moss’ Spyder, number 718-076, was built in February 1961 and delivered to Herrmann Müller of Austria. Müller was a hillclimb expert and won the 1963 European Hillclimb Championship in this RS 61 Spyder. Between 1961 and 1963, this car captured more than a dozen victories.

The Le Mans Legend is a regular fixture at Le Mans. For 2011, the chosen era is 1949-65 and the race has become so popular with entrants, as well as the hundreds of thousands of spectators who flock to Le Mans, that the 61 places on the grid were snapped up soon after entries opened. The entries are split into classes, and Moss – sharing the 45-minute race with co-driver Ian Nuthall – will race in the class for sports-racing cars from 1959-1965, with engines of no more than 2 liters. This puts his Porsche RS 61 up against a Porsche RS 60, Ferrari 206P, Lotus 15 – and a 2-liter, six-cylinder Porsche 904-6 prototype, one of just six built, of which only four survive.